Wednesday, September 3, 2008

FRIDAY, AUG.22 -GLACIER BAY CRUISING

During the early hours we navigated into the entrance to Glacier Bay. Here we slow down to take on board a team of Park Rangers around 7 m then head north into the National Park to visit the Glaciers.

Eleven tidewaters glaciers spill out of the mountains and fill the sea with iceburgs or all shapes, sizes and shades of blue, have make this crowning jewel of Alaska a sight to behold. We cruised along all day and I won't include all the pictures on here, as it's much of the same thing...picture after picture of beautiful scenery. As you can see in the above picture we are getting close to the huge glacier with the bits of ice that have broke or 'calved' off the glacier. They got larger and more impressive as we got close to the glacier where the ship moved in as close as it could get and we were all in awe of the beauty of what we saw. Calving as mentioned above is when bits of ice, some as big as house's break off and fall into the sea. As our ship sat watching, there was an eerie silence, then the sound of grinding and crunching just before a large shot like a rifle had gone off, followed by a thunderous roar as huge chunks of ice fell into the water, which sent up great waves of water that looked as if a small tsumami was heading our way and actually did rock the ship. It was magnificient! I'll just include a few picture of it here. Also, I'll attempt at the end, to include a video I took of it, on our return trip back. (Our trip was a return trip to Vancouver, so we visited the same ports and also the glaciers again...that's when I found out my camera made movies!)

We heard this big roar, and then a loud gun shot sound as this large chunk of calving ice fell, with a huge splash.

The above two pictures are huge pieces of ice that fell and are floating in the water. Some people spotted bears climbing up the mountain, but I missed them, but seen the 3 bears in a picture later.

I believe this was the Mendenhall Glacier. I got them all mixed up, we seen a few! It's the most famous of Juneau's ice floes. Has a one and half mile of face. It was raining the first day here, but mild, so a lot of calving was going on.

The deckhands where out serving hot chocolate and pea soup and handing out blankeds to those who were cold. Meanwhile a Polar Bear Plunge was going on at the outside pool.

Two wonderful friends, Ken and Linda. We had so much fun with them and missed them when they got off at Seward. However we'll keep in touch!! We seem to just click right off the bat from that first picture of us on the ship, which they took, and we in turn took one of them. From that moment, we became friends!! Love them both dearly!!

We all were frozen, so decided to go inside and have hot chocolate and get warmed up. We dressed up that night and went up to the Rotterdam Dining Room and ended up at a huge round table and and met some more wonderful people. (had a little smudge on my lens)

Tomorrow, we continue to cruise Glacier Bay and see different glaciers. So stay tuned!! After dinner we went to a Comedian show, which was great! Then we trudged back to our room, down the long hallway. Entering our room, we'd find a cute little towel animal, our bed turned down and chocolate on our pillow and tomorrows program awaiting us!! How good can it get!!!

I'm going to attempt to put on a movie. Let me know if it works!! This is on our trip back! This may be a long download...I've never done this before, so it may be too long for some to download. If too long, just cancel. Not much calving on the way home.Please remember to turn music off before clicking movie. I just tried it, it works!! I'll put the other side on tomorrow. Enjoy.

Note: when I move the camera up the mountain area, note the other or same part of glacier in the background